Right now my research has me questioning the idea of a stomach 'tac'. The Vet said it's also a longer recovery time. Then I read the sad stories about dogs that had bloat.

Is this stomach tac worth doing? I see females are a bit less likely to get bloat.

Just don't want to put her through more than we have to, without good reason. Thanks

asja

07-10-2014 04:15 PM

I have had two GSDs bloat and nearly die, both requiring midnight runs to the emergency vet 40 minutes away, and emergency surgery at $2000+ each. After those dogs, my younger dog was spayed and gastropexied at 2 years old. I don't ever want to see another dog bloat. My friend's Great Dane died of bloat; she didn't believe me when I tried to explain how awful bloat is. Any dog I have from now on will have a preventive gastropexy, but I will wait until the dog is grown. I would not do a gastropexy on a puppy.

igottabecrazy

07-10-2014 04:21 PM

Indie was spayed and tacked in April at age 13 months. It did add some $$$ to the bill and the incision was longer, but she recovered just fine. It has been some time since I had a dog spayed, so I don't remember much about recovery (and it was a Yorkie). By day 3 it was extremely hard to keep Indie quiet. She was ready to rock again. I would have had better luck trying to coax a tornado into a box. She did chew out 2 sutures by day 8 and all the rest by day 16 - so the vet had nothing to do at our follow-up. If I would have put the cone on her, she would have demolished it while I was at work - and eaten who knows how much of it in the process, so I skipped it. For me it worked out, for my sister's Husky, not so much. She chewed out the sutures and ended up back in surgery.

I, personally, have a long history of bad luck. Coupled with the fact I lost my very old Rott mix to what was probably hemangio - I wanted to try to stack the deck in our favor and not have the kids witness a very bad situation - they adore this dog. I was the one that brought it up with my vet. She said she didn't personally know of that many GSD's with torsion - but then commented that she probably just jinxed me by saying that. So I went ahead and had it done. My neighbor is a vet tech with 2 Great Danes - she thought it was a very good idea.

sourdough44

07-10-2014 05:32 PM

Thanks for the info. I realize 'TAC' isn't the correct term, I'll learn the other.